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Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

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Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#41

Post by pmoriarty »

pingiun wrote: post #35
pmoriarty wrote: post #25

"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…

Luckily mailing lists and newsgroups still exist, some newsgroups are even still active. (Mailings lists too of course, but they are generally created for a specific purpose)

They exist, as do mechanical typewriters and bulletin board systems, but most people don't use them. The web "won" long ago, and newsgroups and mailing lists are now mostly a historical curiosity.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#42

Post by grasshopperpurp »

chrisseaton wrote: post #32
blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

> It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). And what if some of us want the freedom to watch? Maybe I'm illiterate? Just like you, I could say that putting something in writing instead of a video is 'hostile' if it doesn't meet my preferences. Talking about 'hostile' is hysterical.

It's fine to make a video, but if your work is serious at all, it should also be in written text. It's much quicker to read than listen to someone talk. I'm sure there are exceptions where video format makes more sense, but, as a rule, it's incredibly stupid.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#43

Post by AstralStorm »

pingiun wrote: post #35
pmoriarty wrote: post #25

"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…

Luckily mailing lists and newsgroups still exist, some newsgroups are even still active. (Mailings lists too of course, but they are generally created for a specific purpose)

Also forums for special interests. (Outgrowth of a bulletin board.) Some do not even abuse their data and users.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#44

Post by alexandercrohde »

kbuchanan wrote: post #15

> Today, we are so far from that initial vision of linking documents to share knowledge that it's hard to simply browse the web for information without constantly being asked to buy something, like something, follow someone, share the page on Facebook or sign up to some newsletter. I'm a non-user of all things social media. My Twitter account is purely nominal (for pinging company support), and I don't have a Faceboo…

It's not unsolvable though. HN is an example of a technology that shapes the rules of the forum in such a way that a top spot cannot be purchased.

Forum design is the new frontier.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#45

Post by wickawic »

hasenj wrote: post #36

I think the problem is one of economics. The SV culture made it valuable for startups to amass a large amount of users. Where as before this bubble started, it was more profitable for development shops to build (and sell) software that anyone can use to host their own site/forum/whatever. This might not be the entire solution, but I think it would be a step in the right direction: We need more products that are devel…

sidebar: lots of easy to enjoy things are implemented in 'slow' interpreted languages. This site, for one.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#46

Post by kuschku »

chrisseaton wrote: post #32
blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

> It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). And what if some of us want the freedom to watch? Maybe I'm illiterate? Just like you, I could say that putting something in writing instead of a video is 'hostile' if it doesn't meet my preferences. Talking about 'hostile' is hysterical.

You can always use a screen reader to automatically have it read the text to you, and it works well enough.

I can’t have an OCR system automatically translate a video into text.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#47

Post by hasenj »

wickawic wrote: post #45
hasenj wrote: post #36

I think the problem is one of economics. The SV culture made it valuable for startups to amass a large amount of users. Where as before this bubble started, it was more profitable for development shops to build (and sell) software that anyone can use to host their own site/forum/whatever. This might not be the entire solution, but I think it would be a step in the right direction: We need more products that are devel…

sidebar: lots of easy to enjoy things are implemented in 'slow' interpreted languages. This site, for one.

Which I think is a big mistake, because even if it ends up being used in a low traffic site, it ends up complicating the installation process. Where as a compiled language not only would run fast but also have a very simple setup: just copy over the exe and run it. Nothing to configure. No dependencies to install.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#48

Post by wvenable »

blunte wrote: post #8

This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…

Microsoft is the worst for providing content in video only form (Channel 9). There have been tons of potentially interesting content posted to HN from Microsoft but I'm not going to sit through an hour long video at work. And they almost never provide any alternative text content (an article) for what's in the video.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#49

Post by pmoriarty »

amorphid wrote: post #40
pmoriarty wrote: post #25

"For many of us in the early 2000s, the web was magical. You connected a phone line to your computer, let it make a funny noise and suddenly you had access to a seemingly-unending repository of thoughts and ideas from people around the world. "It might not seem like much now, but what that noise represented was the stuff of science fiction at the time: near-instantaneous communication at a planetary scale. It was a b…

I never got into the pre-web stuff, so I don't know exactly what the differences are. Don't those things still exist? Isn't the comment section of this HN post a form of async, text-only communication?

It's still centralized, and owned and run by a commercial entity that uses it to further their own interests, with a record of its users' interests and opinions.

The capabilities and features of web forums are also really dumbed-down and limited compared to what you could get with the mail clients and news clients of even 20 or 30 years ago.

Re: Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web

#50

Post by [deleted] »

hasenj wrote: post #47
wickawic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sidebar: lots of easy to enjoy things are implemented in 'slow' interpreted languages. This site, for one.

Which I think is a big mistake, because even if it ends up being used in a low traffic site, it ends up complicating the installation process. Where as a compiled language not only would run fast but also have a very simple setup: just copy over the exe and run it. Nothing to configure. No dependencies to install.

[deleted]
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